The decay and persistence of web references

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify the persistence and decay of uniform resource locator (URLs) associated with Web references. The decaying of Web references is analyzed in relation to their age, domain, technical errors and error codes. Design/methodology/approach The Web references of the Journal of Informetrics were selected for analysis and interpretation to fulfill the set objectives. The references of all the scholarly articles, excluding editorials and reviews published in the Journal of Informetrics for five years from 2007 to 2011 were recorded in a text file. Later, the URLs were extracted from the articles to verify their accessibility in terms of persistence and decay. The collected data were then transferred into an excel file and tabulated for further analysis and interpretation using simple statistical techniques. Findings The results showed that of the total 7,409 citations retrieved from 221 articles, 358 citations (4.8%) were Web citations. These Web citations were assessed to find their persistence and decay. The results reveal that 115 (32.12%) Web references were missing or dead. The most common error associated with the missing Web citations was Error 404 Page not found, contributing 60% of the total missing citations, followed by 400 Bad Request Error (35.65%). The domain analysis of missing Web citations depicts that most of the missing URLs were associated with the .gov domain (40%), followed by .edu (29.58%) and .com (26.04%). Research limitations/implications The Web references of a single journal, namely, Journal of Informetrics, were analyzed for five years, and hence, the generalization of findings needs to be cautioned. Practical implications The URL decay is becoming a major problem in the preservation and citation of the Web resources, and collaborative efforts are needed to reduce the decaying of URLs. Originality/value A good number of studies have been conducted to analyze the persistence and decay of Web references, as it is the hot topic of research across disciplines, and this study is a step further in the same direction.

Giving life to dead: role of WayBack Machine in recovery of dead URLs

“…Wiki Grabber monitors wiki pages and keeps track of wiki pages that have dead links (Grabber, 2021). Further, Loan and Shah (2020) recommended that web sources should be archived in more than one place such as in institutional repositories, subject repositories, national repositories and academic networks to keep them alive and prevent death. The use of LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)" and CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) can be an efficient tool in this way.…”

“…The author reported that only 50.2 per cent of the documents published by the Spanish journal Enfermeria Nefrologica l between 2006 and 2017 were registered by Scopus and the rest weren't indexed in the database. Loan and Shah (2020) studied the persistence, and decay of URLs associated with web references to their age, domain, technical errors and error codes. The results reveal that 32.12 per cent of web references were missing or dead.…”